Collaboration
‘Housing is responsible for just over 28 percent of the UK’s primary energy consumption and associated CO2 emissions,’ says Dr Mark Gillott, project manager of the Creative Energy Homes study at Nottingham University. This vast project will develop energy efficient homes and technology, and monitor the use of people living in them. It is being funded and conducted in collaboration with major construction, materials and energy companies such as Stoneguard, Roger Bullivant Ltd, E.ON, BASF, and Tarmac.

The project was ‘conceived three years ago’ says Gillott. ‘And we will have seven houses in total, all with a different theme.’ The University has a track record in this field as they had carried out a one-off project with David Wilson Homes around 1999 and 2000. And a couple of sustainable housing pioneers, Brenda and Robert Vale, who wrote the famous 'The Autonomous House' and who worked at the University, built a zero carbon house near Nottingham in the 1990s.

Different themes
The UK government has major legislation coming in on zero carbon housing which makes ‘a massive step change in practice’, says Gillott. ‘Hence the project is primarily funded by industry, with over 100 industrial partners. Each house has a different theme such as a lightweight steel house, a concrete house from Richard Bullivant, our timbered panelled house with BASF. People are living in it, we are taking data from the house looking how they are living in the house and how they are using the energy, and the implications of the systems they are trialling and testing. Then there’s the E.ON house which we recreated as a 1930s development, we plan to take this house to zero carbon within three years.’

Research and education
Gillot stresses that the value of this research is seeing how people use and live in these house in reality, rather than on the drawing board. ‘We are developing new ideas, new systems that can go into houses, and we want to demonstrate how we can do it cost effectively in a way the average person can. And we are going to test and trial new technologies developed by ourselves and other universities in a collaborative project.’ Alongside the essential and usable data from the project, students at the university get to see and explore science in action.